what they said is these reports were based on the misreading of a single slide released by edward snowden. and that slide showing she is numbers in millions and so on. but in fact, the nsa collected no information in europe. they say that any information, any of this metadata, that's what it was just metadata. not phone calls or content. was done by european intelligence services not by the nsa. and that in fact it was nof of citizens of those countries, france and spain, but collected from a number of sources by the u.s. and nato allies in support of military operations abroad. here's how they made that case at the hearings today. >> assertions by reporters in france, lemond, spain, el mundo, italy espresso that new york sa collected millions of phone calls are completely false. to be perfectly clear, this is not information that we collected on european citizens. it represents information that we and our nato allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations. >> so in effect they're saying there that one of the strongest reasons for this anger we've